The Flamboya Tree: Memories of a Mother's Wartime Courage - Clara Kelly

As a small child, Kelly spent nearly four years in a brutal Japanese concentration camp in Indonesia during WWII. She survived because of her mother, who cared for her three children (including a newborn baby), found them food and shelter, nurtured them with unwavering love under appalling conditions, and insisted on honesty, decency, even good manners, as they coped with filth, hunger, and disease. The child's-eye view of her brave parent makes this memoir a moving, immediate account of a relatively unknown wartime drama. From a pampered Dutch colonial life on the "exotic" island of Java, complete with a household of sweet, faithful, "native" servants, the young mother suddenly found herself assigned the job of cleaning out the camp sewers as well as keeping her children safe. The portrait is idealized, but the facts of family survival are undeniable. The most unforgettable moment frames the story: at the end of the war, as they stagger off the crowded boat in Holland, sick and starving, Kelly's grandmother demands of them, "Why didn't you escape?" Hazel Rochman